Evrofrigo company has refunded the State Agricultural Fund (SAF), the body in charge of allocating payments under European Union's Sapard pre-accession programme, a total of 2.93 million leva, Bulgarian BTA news agency said on August 1 2008.

The refund came about after SAF experts identified eight cases of irregularities and fraud during a review of payments under projects since 2006.

Evroifrigo was mentioned in a report by the European Commission’s European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) as part of a “criminal network made up of more than 50 Bulgarian, European and offshore companies, controlled and/or financed by [Bulgarian businessmen] Mario Nikolov and Lyudmil Stoykov, suspected of having close ties to the current Government”.

The report leaked to Bulgarian media on July 16 and caused harsh reactions from the executive.

The Olaf report gave a name to the alleged criminal group, dubbing it “The Nikolov-Stoykov Group”.

Olaf Director-General Franz-Hermann Bruener says in the report that “influential forces within the Bulgarian government and/or state agencies have no interest in seeing the punishment of anyone in the criminal gangs that have embezzled EU funds”.
Since the report's publication both Nikolov and Stoykov have denied its findings. Stoykov said he was willing to take a lie detector test if necessary to prove his innocence.

However, the report was used by the opposition to demand the resignation of President Georgi Purvanov because Stoykov was one of the sponsors of Purvanov's election campaign in 2006 when he won his second consecutive term in office.

According to the list of sponsors published on the presidency website, Stoykov has donated 50 000 leva to Purvanov's campaign. “I did it because we come from the same town [Pernik]” Stoykov told reporters when asked about it.

The Olaf report was not the first time that Stoykov's name has appeared in the media in connection to alleged embezzlement of 7.5 million euro of EU funds. On February 18 this years the Prosecutor-General's Office put an end to a probe in Stoykov's activity that was based on the same allegations. Nothing was proven. 

Since the Sapard Programme was launched, irregularities have been found in 109 projects worth 29 million leva out of a total  of 3509 projects, the SAF said.